Wow...what a rocket ride. Scares me a bit when I see charts with such steep inclinations. Good work on your part though Peter for tracking all the sales and latest prices. cheers

Please keep in mind that this is a measurement of rare coin prices. None of the coins in it appear for sale very often and when they do they are, of late, usually the subjects of intense interest. This particular index is meant to partly address the question of whether rare Pandas can be good investments.

I plan to put together a second index for coins under 4 or 5,000 populations. I may even do a third one for common date Pandas. I expect the last one to pretty much track the prices of gold and silver (although maybe it will have some surprises, too). Anyway, the steep slope doesn't scare me at all. It's more a case of someone finally noticing how undervalued these coins have been for years. It will be interesting to track the index in the future.

I'll publish the components of the Index first in Panda Pricepedia and later on the Pandacollector.com website. Then you can see how the different metals compare. The biggest obstacle in constructing this list was that half the coins that would qualify by population haven't sold publicly often enough to make a continuous chart from. Each coin is really a special situation although the basket does give a general description of one end of the market.

I think the Index for 5,000 and under populations will lend itself better to comparing gold vs silver vs platinum Pandas.

I'll publish the components of the Index first in Panda Pricepedia and later on the Pandacollector.com website. Then you can see how the different metals compare. The biggest obstacle in constructing this list was that half the coins that would qualify by population haven't sold publicly often enough to make a continuous chart from. Each coin is really a special situation although the basket does give a general description of one end of the market.

I think the Index for 5,000 and under populations will lend itself better to comparing gold vs silver vs platinum Pandas.

Very impressive peter! Keep up the great work. Be sure to stop by the play del rey show the 15/16th an say hi.

Please keep in mind that this is a measurement of rare coin prices. None of the coins in it appear for sale very often and when they do they are, of late, usually the subjects of intense interest. This particular index is meant to partly address the question of whether rare Pandas can be good investments.

I plan to put together a second index for coins under 4 or 5,000 populations. I may even do a third one for common date Pandas. I expect the last one to pretty much track the prices of gold and silver (although maybe it will have some surprises, too). Anyway, the steep slope doesn't scare me at all. It's more a case of someone finally noticing how undervalued these coins have been for years. It will be interesting to track the index in the future.

GOLD PANDA INDEXHere I would recommend the most commonly collected denominations (1 oz., 1/2 oz., 1/10 oz.) and again record prices for just BU coins from 1982 to present.

I would leave out proof coins as proofs are usually a "collectors" choice and not a "bullion buyers" choice. Thus if you want to compare bullion silver and gold to "bullion" pandas then I believe staying with the BU pandas is the best way to do that. I think these two indices would be the best way to gauge a straight up silver and gold index to a "silver panda index" and "gold panda index".

Just my opinion and something I would love to see. For the most part, I think they would track relatively closely, but if it shows something surprising, which it might, that would be the interesting part.

I think the Silver Proof 1 oz Pandas from 1983 to 1996 would be a natural. I am not sure how far back your data goes.I believe most of us here are collectors and not just bullion buyers. In the beginning that is all there was, there was never bullion coins in Silver anyway, but always rare coins. Very Limited mintages.We paid a premium then and would like to see how it would compare to the Bullion Market, I would suspect it will hold up in any down turn better than any bullion coins would. But then again we collectors love the Panda's anyway. Up or Down we collect them.

Of course there are Bullion Silver Panda's now and have been since 1989, the BU's. Which have done very nicely lately.But then so has bullion.

GOLD PANDA INDEXHere I would recommend the most commonly collected denominations (1 oz., 1/2 oz., 1/10 oz.) and again record prices for just BU coins from 1982 to present.

I like this idea very much and it is on my to do list. It may take some time before I can get to it, though. I have some extra personal motivation to create these indexes, too. Last week, for the first time, I went back over the coins that have been recommended in the Panda Pricepedia. I compared their prices when they were first featured and their prices now. I did the same for gold and silver during this time period using Kitco's historical data. It's been a good 10 months for everybody: silver is up by 36%/yr, gold by 43%/yr, and the Pricepedia recommendations by 157%/yr. That was a relief as I considered my real test to be to beat bullion, not paper money. The one thing I still need to complete the picture is the indexes you describe. Hopefully the time to construct them will be available soon. The second edition of my book and the monthly Pricepedia have priority, though.

I'm interested in the silver pandas (non bullion) with mintages of 40,000 or less. I think most of the rarer silver pandas are between 10-40K and that's what a lot of us collect. The 40K to 200K could be another category. Myself I don't care as much about the pandas that have a mintage of over 200k although others might be interested. The pandas that are being produced today that have mintages over 1 million probably won't appreciate too much anytime in the future and are almost like bullion to me.I wouldn't mind seeing something like that for the lunars, especially the dragons. However I think the chart will be coming down in 2012-2013 given the quick run up.

Please keep in mind that this is a measurement of rare coin prices. None of the coins in it appear for sale very often and when they do they are, of late, usually the subjects of intense interest. This particular index is meant to partly address the question of whether rare Pandas can be good investments.

I plan to put together a second index for coins under 4 or 5,000 populations. I may even do a third one for common date Pandas. I expect the last one to pretty much track the prices of gold and silver (although maybe it will have some surprises, too). Anyway, the steep slope doesn't scare me at all. It's more a case of someone finally noticing how undervalued these coins have been for years. It will be interesting to track the index in the future.

I haven't seen any updated "20 Index" for over a year, I wonder why this was stopped for so long? I think this question was raised by other forum members a few times last year. If you follow this market closely, I think majority of you would agree that it has been in a down trend since the summer of 2011, any educated guess on what percentage we are down so far since then?

P.S. There was a very high price paid for a MS-70 1997 5 Yuan platinum Panda. MS-70 or PF-70 coins are NOT part of this Index, as their values are both volatile, and imo not good predictors for the prices of most coins.

I haven't seen any updated "20 Index" for over a year, I wonder why this was stopped for so long? I think this question was raised by other forum members a few times last year. If you follow this market closely, I think majority of you would agree that it has been in a down trend since the summer of 2011, any educated guess on what percentage we are down so far since then?

I will update the Index as soon as the book is at the printer, and I have time. There have been several requests!

Rare coins are always the better investment over the long haul but I would say common would be greater than 40K so an index of 5-40K would be great for a lot of us. And everyone has to keep in mind that any type of investment will take a 50% hit every now and then. Every great stock that has done a 20-50 fold has been cut in half at sometime. So there shouldn't be any surprise if in the chart above goes below 300 or at least gets cut in half at sometime in the future. You really can't say anything about any 4 year period as an "investment" because that's really only a short term trend. An investment is something that last decades or a lifetime. But thanks very much for coming up with such an index. This could be a benchmark someday to compare returns for Asian coins verses US coins or verses US stock averages.

I plan to put together a second index for coins under 4 or 5,000 populations. I may even do a third one for common date Pandas. I expect the last one to pretty much track the prices of gold and silver (although maybe it will have some surprises, too). Anyway, the steep slope doesn't scare me at all. It's more a case of someone finally noticing how undervalued these coins have been for years. It will be interesting to track the index in the future.

I guess this is the list of rarest Pandas. Is there anway to find out the mintage of each of the 20 coins listed in column format? For those of us who aren't as knowledgeable in Panda mintage this info would be quite interesting. I'd love to see a list of rarest lunars. Does Peter's book on Pandas cover lunars? Thanks.

The Panda Pricepedia 20 Index does not reflect all pandas, it is just an index of some (20 or 21) of the rarer and more expensive Pandas and has not been uodated in a long time. If it were updated it has likely experienced a decline, as those expensive coins popularity has slowed, and prices in many cases even fallen.

However, the more common Pandas which are NOT on the index, have seen a nice run up in price lately and which yes have outgained bullion by quite a large margin during that time. The PPI will not reflect this.

Simply put, the higher priced rarer pandas in the Pricepedia 20 Index have not kept up with the more common lower priced pandas lately.

is there going to be an update on the Pricepedia Index, or is it being purposefully temporarily vacationedso as to be PC ? Why has it not been updated in such a long time? Are not the numbers there- monthly, in the Monthly Pricepedia?

Logged

"He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good."

is there going to be an update on the Pricepedia Index, or is it being purposefully temporarily vacationedso as to be PC ? Why has it not been updated in such a long time? Are not the numbers there- monthly, in the Monthly Pricepedia?

The Index has been on the back burner while the "Gold and Silver Panda Coin Buyer's Guide" was rewritten. It will be updated soon. Yes, the numbers for each coin are in the China Pricepedia, too. They just haven't been tallied in the Pricepedia Index.

Will there be any update on this original index? The only one that seems to be mentioned now is the China Pricepedia MCM index, which was started more recently and has different coins?

The Panda Pricepedia 20 Index is retired. The newer China Pricepedia MCM index is deliberately made up of coins that are not particularly rare so that it will reflect the current market. However, one of the coins in the MCM Index went crazy on a coin exchange in August going from $100 to nearly $2,000. I will have to see how that affects the value of the MCM Index compared to the general coin market in the future. Somebody once asked if the MCM Index components ever changed like the DOW does. The insinuation seemed to be that an underperforming coin might be dropped. The real problem may be what to do with a coin that goes up so much that the Index stops reflecting the overall market?